Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a speech-processing apparatus and a speech-processing method.
Background
Recently, technologies on sound source separation in which speeches of a plurality of speakers are separated into speech for each one of the plurality of speakers or on sound source localization in which a location of a speaker is localized have been proposed in fields such as a vehicle, a robot, and a meeting record generation apparatus. When a microphone array is used to perform sound source localization or sound source separation, it is necessary to obtain a transfer function between the microphone array and a sound source to be observed as prior information by geometric calculation or measurement of a specific signal. There may be a case in which it is difficult to obtain transfer function information that should be obtained in advance, for example, when a user fabricates a microphone array by oneself depending on the purpose. Therefore, improvements are desired in use of apparatuses that perform sound source localization and sound source separation.
As a technique in which a transfer function is estimated, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication No. 2010-181448 discloses that a predetermined signal is output from a microphone in an online state, and the output signal is received by a microphone to dynamically estimate a transfer function.